Our Centre holds expertise and knowledge in community engagement, emphasising co-production and effective action by rooting research in processes of community engagement.

Our aims

We aim to achieve this by:

Using participatory methods to audit community needs and collaboratively identify research agendas with community partners.

Respond by matching community research needs with student research projects relating to the professional skills of Social Work, Community Work and Youth Work.

Develop collaborative funding applications for the co-production of research projects.

Provide shared opportunities for exchange of knowledge and skills.

We support Goldsmiths’ Strategic Plan, particularly in the areas of collaborative research, knowledge exchange and consultancy. We also enable community–university partnerships that aim to support sustainable and inclusive communities and the voluntary and community organisations that work with them. In doing so we will facilitate collaborative research partnerships that seek to enhance the social, economic and environmental well-being of communities.

Our work

Our work is based on a distinctive framework of values arising from the professional disciplines represented in the Department of Social, Therapeutic and Community Studies. This emphasises:

A co-production model reflecting a community-university collaborative research partnerships approach. This recognises the importance of involving partners equitably in systems of research agenda setting, shaping, governance and delivery. It stresses the importance of participatory processes based on principles of social justice, openness, cooperation, mutual respect, the value of shared skills and knowledge through experience and the equality of research ownership and community control.

The importance of seeking research outcomes that lead to tangible benefits for research participants, communities, and voluntary and community organisations, particularly redressing social injustice and inequalities in access to resources and power, and transforming ways of seeing, thinking and acting through fostering learning and increasing and consolidating community knowledge, skills, confidence and power.